Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Bizarre cold call

I just received the most bizarre cold call. This call came on my personal cell phone, a number I acquired in 2005 soon after starting at my current job.
Telemarketer: Hi, is this <my name>?
Me: yes
TM: I'm calling from Tiger Direct, can you direct me to the person in charge of IT purchasing for your company <my employer>?
Me: why are you calling me?
TM: Well, you made a purchase from us, and I'm calling to see if you can direct me to the person who makes IT purchases for your company.
Me: What are you talking about, I didn't order anything.
TM: Well, it was back in '96. It was a $400 uh... something. Can you tell me who is in charge of IT purchasing at your company?
Me: <hangs up dumbfounded >

I'm really curious how they connected a purchase made in 1996, which would be 5 mailing addresses, 3 phone numbers, and 4 employers ago to my current cell number and employer, which themselves aren't particularly connected.

3 comments:

Borepatch said...

Their Google-fu is strong.

We use them kind of a lot at work, and I've used them at home a couple times. Never had a cold call from them, tho.

JD said...

I want to know who did the research and why the government is not using them to track Illegals or other criminals. . . .

Anonymous said...

I may have been hacked by someone from Tiger Direct. I opened up my Hotmail one day and EVERYONE of my address book entries was g-o-n-e. And I had a bunch of non-standard English emails in my in-box. Apparently the hacker had taken over my computer, logged into my Hotmail, used it to send out emails to everyone in my address book, then wiped the a.b. clean. Then friends started emailing me back, "Uh, what is this email I got from you?"